Valleywag: Max Levchin

Max Levchin gives Slide a new business model, again

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Max Levchin is onto his third business plan for Slide. Levchin's startup just signed a deal with content distributors Time Warner, Warner Bros., CBS, E!, Hulu and others to turn Slide's FunSpace application — formerly known as FunWall — into a video-sharing, video-distribution channel targeting social network users. Opening a New York sales office soon, Slide will sell ads against its partners' videos as well as share in some of their revenues. Levchin's investors say Slide is worth $550 million, but they're obviously investing in Levchin's ability to will Slide's 160 million users into a valuable asset, no matter how many times the company stumbles.

At its founding, Slide was supposed to be a shopper's search engine. That model was dropped and before today's news, Slide's plan was to somehow charge advertisers for conversations its social network widget users had about brands. That was too gimmicky and unproven for Madison Avenue. One exec there told me he expected "Slide and [it's closest rival] RockYou will get weeded out." Now Levchin says: "Television is a world that advertisers love." More than widgets? Let there be no doubt.

If Levchin can turn Slide into an old school brand advertising-supported business with massive scale he might just live up to his investors expectations. For perspective, remember that ad-supported Readers' Digest has half as many people as subscribers and a private equity firm bought it for $1.6 billion in 2007.

Please don't post photos of my wedding to Slide

Jackson West — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:00:00 PDT

Slide founder Max Levchin made longtime lover Nellie Minkova an honest woman on Saturday. The ceremony was held at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel, and featured HotOrNot cofounder James Hong as best man, with fellow PayPal mafioso Peter Thiel another groomsman. Gracious enough for the couple to refuse gifts besides books and wine, considering how many zeros Levchin can count toward his (and now their) wealth. However, rather ironic that the bride and groom asked guests not to upload any pictures from the ceremonies online for "privacy" reasons.

Levchin's Slide promotes the practice of sharing every precious and not-so-precious moment with the world at large, and that his company has massive amounts of Facebook user data at its disposal thanks to the popularity of the company's Facebook applications. Yes, the rich are different than you and I: They don't buy into the crap they sell us.

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Robert Scoble, other Valley bon vivants subject of latest ego-stroking linkbait

Jackson West — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump.

Robert Scoble

Michael Arrington

Jack Dorsey

Biz Stone

Matt Cutts

Pete Cashmore

Dave Winer

Guy Kawasaki

Loïc Le Meur

Kevin Rose

Merlin Mann

Stowe Boyd

Jeff Atwood

Jeremiah Owyang

Veronica Belmont

Kara Swisher

Scott Beale

Marc Andreessen

Ryan Block

David Sifry

Emily Chang

Om Malik

Timothy Ferriss

Nick Douglas

John Battelle

David Cohn

Louis Gray

Tom Foremski

Tim O'Reilly

Ariel Waldman

Matt Mullenweg

Dean Takahashi

Philip Kaplan

JD Lasica

Sarah Lacy

Brian Solis

Charlene Li

Rafe Needleman

Dan Farber

Howard Rheingold

David McClure

Margaret Mason

Jason Goldman

Leah Culver

Chris Shipley

Jackson West

Liz Gannes

Owen Thomas

Adeo Ressi

Max Levchin

(Photo from Michael Arrington)

Slide shows off the wealth at third anniversary

Owen Thomas — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:20:00 PDT

Attention, rival Facebook-application developers: Slide has money in the bank, and your widget startup doesn't. Such was the unsubtle message of Slide's third anniversary, held last night at San Francisco's newly opened Contemporary Jewish Museum. It was the first tech-company party held at the sleekly modern spot, a block or so away from Second and Mission, San Francisco's new dotcom epicenter (Slide is based nearby, as are Yelp, Socializr, and others.) It was Slide's first big party since raising $50 million earlier this year. CEO Max Levchin has not let wealth go to his head — he was happily recounting how, when he first moved to Palo Alto, he had to fast-talk his way into an apartment lease from a paisan named Vinnie, since past startup failures had thoroughly wrecked his credit.

But he is not above a little strategic flaunting. Slide hired a Hollywood props firm to create life-sized versions of the sheep and other icons from its SuperPoke Facebook app, displayed like museum exhibits at the party. Could rival RockYou afford such a gratuitous show of wealth? With their latest funding round not quite locked down, unlikely. It's considered bad form to spend money while you're out raising more. And that was Levchin's point in throwing the party: It's not quite that he was spending money for the sake of spending money. He was spending money to show that he could.

Barry Diller reveals he still likes them young in Sun Valley

Owen Thomas — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:00:00 PDT

At Allen & Co.'s annual schmoozefest in Sun Valley, Idaho, there were a lot of regulars, like IAC's Barry Diller — and a few new faces, like Slide CEO Max Levchin. Julia Boorstin of CNBC reports that the two were "lingering" together at lunch. This after Kevin Rose reported how Diller charmed
the (metaphorical) pants off of him in acquisition talks that ultimately went nowhere. I doubt any dalliance between Diller's IAC and Levchin's Slide will go much further; Slide's far too expensive, and Diller's far too fickle. But I'm sure Diller finds the company of young men refreshing.

Did Slide get rival RockYou's Facebook apps punished?

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:40:00 PDT

Traffic to RockYou's popular Facebook widget Super Wall declined from 2.1 million to 600,000 daily users over the last few days, as Facebook blocked the widget from sending users notifications and messages, claiming RockYou had violated Facebook's privacy policies. RockYou CTO Jia Shen told Inside Facebook the allegations and their punitive response are "slightly debatable":

There are policies Facebook has issued, but there is always room for interpretation - and in light of current changes, the interpretation is a lot more stringent now in contrast to before.

Facebook's probably getting strict because its preparing for a relaunch of its design in July. Or — and this pure speculation — the third-party security firm Rock You's rival Slide hired to audit its own privacy might have gotten paid a little extra to take a close look at the competition and alert Facebook to any infractions. We wouldn't put it past hypercompetitive Slide founder Max Levchin and his crafty sidekick, Keith Rabois.

VH1 and Slide sign deal to create Facebook's killer app -- Flavor Flav SuperPokes

Jackson West — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:00:00 PDT

On Wednesday, Facebook and MySpace users who have installed Slide's near-ubiquitous SuperPoke widget — the one that lets you throw sheep — will be able to send messages branded with characters and slogans from VH1's stable of reality series such as Flavor Flav from Flavor of Love. It's all an effort to promote the new series I Love Money — which, surprisingly, does not star hypercompetitive Slide founder Max Levchin. Who knew?

$35 million round wasn't enough for RockYou

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:20:00 PDT

Online widgetmaker RockYou is still looking for another $5 million to $15 million in funding, even after it took $35 million last week, at a $300 million valuation. That money was for doubling its staff, moving to a larger office in Redwood City and acquiring more widgets — those annoying add-ons to social-network profiles — for its portfolio, RockYou CTO and founder Jia Shen told Silicon Alley Insider — but it's not clear what the extra cash is for. In March, rumor had it RockYou's lastest funding round would set its value near $400 million, but thanks in part to a sliding ad market and a developer-unfriendly Facebook redesign, investors are said to have turned skeptical, sending the startup's paper value down by $100 million to $150 million.

Despite the blow from Facebook, Shen told SAI that unlike its closest competitor, Max Levchin's Slide, RockYou intends to keep developing for the platform. RockYou will need to — especially if developer Blake Commagere wrestles back control of his popular Vampires and Zombies apps. (Photo by califrayray)

New details on Yelp's New York expansion

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:40:00 PDT

Social reviews site Yelp isn't nearly as popular in New York as it is in San Francisco and management has been planning to do something about it. "They're gonna pump up efforts to conquer NYC, renting an office in Gramercy area and assign [an] East Coast community leader," a source with new details tells us. Yelp already has an ad sales office in New York's West Village, but our source says those people will move to the larger office further uptown by September as well. Yelp is a cousin to widgetmaker Slide, with Slide founder Max Levchin on Yelp's board. With Slide's own upcoming move to New York and Yelp's city expansion, we'd expect to see a lot more Levchin around the Alley, except, well, we hear he never leaves the office. (And if he did, we'd prefer he say hello to his bride to be first.)

Slide comes to New York, cap in hand

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:20:00 PDT

Widgetmaker Slide hired AOL's former director of national sales, Jason Bitensky, and opened a New York office in the West Village, Kara Swisher reports. Slide CEO and founder Max Levchin says his company followed the bright lights to the big city because

the success of campaigns on our popular products, such as SuperPoke!, Top Friends and FunWall, has attracted the attention of not only top brands, but also top talent like Jason.

If only attention were as good as cash. Then Slide might be more than the online version of the musicians in every corner of New York's subway system — amusing, nice to have around while waiting for a train or a page to load, but hardly worth $550 million. U.S. marketers spent a paltry $600 million on social media advertising in 2007 — the same amount Procter & Gamble will spend over two months on its entire marketing budget and a tiny fraction of the $18 billion spent on interactive advertising last year. Somehow, we don't think a bunch more SuperPoke inventory flooding the market is going to fix the problem.(Photo by bk . ninja)

Facebook's widget security? You could throw a sheep through it

Owen Thomas — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:20:00 PDT

Linking up social websites, as proponents of "data portability" would have us do, can be hazardous to your privacy. And Paris Hilton's, and Lindsay Lohan's. But even the widgets on a single social network can leave us exposed. SuperPoke, a popular application made by Slide, will show you who's thrown a sheep at anyone, as long as you have their Facebook ID — the unique numeric identifier which shows up in the URL of their Facebook profile. Mark Zuckerberg's SuperPoke feed is here; substitute the number of another Facebook user for Zuckerberg's "4", and you can see every last sheep he or she has been involved with.

Byron Ng, the inquisitive Canadian computer technician who found a hole in MySpace's linkup with Yahoo, tipped me off to this trick, which works with a wide range of widgets, he says, whether or not you're friends with a given user. (SuperPoke has a private-actions option, but it's hard to find and few people seem to use it.)

Is it scandalous to learn that, say, Slide CEO Max Levchin has "bitten" Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Not especially (though Levchin went through a rather disturbing biting phase last month). What it tells us, really, is just how unseriously people take the widgets on Facebook. That these applications have remained wide open just goes to show that they don't do anything worth hiding. And where's the fun in that?

Start a company now, says Max Levchin -- so he can buy it

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:20:00 PDT

Slide founder Max Levchin believes Web 2.0 is about to bust. Funding will evaporate and revenues won't materialize; companies will fold and employees will lose their jobs. The lucky few that can will sellout to larger companies. All of which means "this is the perfect time to start a company," Levchin told the Financial Times. Why does Levchin believe this? You know, other than the fact that he's a well-documented masochist who works 15 to 18 hour days and, despite a fear of the water, forced himself through a triathlon?

Because Levchin believes that right now, companies that get it right — get funding, revenues or both — will be able to vacuum up developer talent and smaller, failing companies with useful assets. For example, Slide, which recently raised $50 million, and whose most successful application, SuperPoke, was an acquisition from three Seattle based kids, not an internal development. How convenient if Levchin's theory made it even easier to perform more such maneuvers. And does anyone wonder why he wasn't predicting an impending apocalypse before his company's latest round? All of this seems like it would have been useful information for his new investors. (Photo by flawedartist)

Security ejects Valleywag from D6 conference

Owen Thomas — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:46:02 PDT

CARLSBAD, CA — I wasn't just eighty-sixed, folks. No, I was eight-D6'd. There I was, charming my way through the crowd at the Wall Street Journal's D6 conference — why hello, Sir Howard Stringer of Sony! Oh, was that Steve Case? — when a woman announced herself as "in-house security" and informed me that "the client" had asked that I be shown the door. "The client" being Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, the conference organizers, and "the door" actually just the way to the hotel bar, where I'm having a lovely fruity beverage. And Swisher and Mossberg were too late with the bum rush. I'd already been working my camera for hours. While Bill Gates bores attendees with a preview of Windows Seven, Microsoft's latest attempt to annoy the majority of computer users, you can enjoy the snapshots I took. Among the nerdspotting: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Max Levchin of Slide.

What should Max Levchin do with his forgotten $100,000?

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Before PayPal and Slide founder Max Levchin moved from Illinois to Palo Alto in 1998, he'd started three companies and sold the last for $100,000 — not a tiny amount of money, especially for a young entrepreneur. But after selling PayPal to eBay for $1.54 billion, these days Levchin is worth around $100 million. Six figures no longer merit that much of his attention. It's such a paltry amount that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy reports Levchin actually forgot about the money until 2006. "In just four years," Lacy writes, "$100,000 would go from being unfathomable riches to pocket change." Levchin is no longer interested in the purchasing power of money, but we are. So let the young multi-millionaire know how he should spend that $100,000 in "pocket change" in our poll.

Photos from Sarah Lacy's book party

Owen Thomas — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Web 2.0 was hot last night. And I mean the kind of heat determined not by Technorati rank, but by the thermometer. Despite the stifling weather, San Francisco's Web stars turned out for a party Sarah Lacy threw for her new book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good at Otis off Union Square. The hole-in-the-wall, two-story bar couldn't handle the crowd, which spilled out on Maiden Lane. Slide CEO Max Levchin, the star of the book, stopped by with fiancé Nellie Minkova to congratulate Lacy, and then immediately left. Runner-up Jay Adelson, whom Levchin beat on page count, stayed longer, as did Twitter's Ev Williams, who came with his wife, Sara Morishige. Also in the crowd: August Capital VC David Hornik, who didn't even rate a mention in the index, despite inviting Lacy to his exclusive Lobby conference. A gallery of photos, after the jump:

Photos by Randal Alan Smith

Slide exec on widgets: Fun is where the money is

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:20:00 PDT

This decade's greatest Internet hits — Google and PayPal — make so much money because they help money change hands more efficiently. The next great wave of moneymakers on the Web won't be nearly so utilitarian, Keith Rabois, VP at widgetmaker Slide, argues in a guest post to AllThingsD. Rabois says the Web's next mint will be made on fun — a very underrated commodity, he says. To demonstrate his point, he harkens back to the week of April 21 and the electoral contest that captured all of America's attention. Not the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Rabois writes. "I'm talking about American Idol." Then he lays down some convincing numbers:

Consider the value of other companies that deliver entertainment: Disney (DIS), Time Warner (TWX) and Sony (SNE) have a combined market cap of over $168 billion. Gross revenue for the NFL and MLB last year exceeded $12 billion. Apple (AAPL) made nearly $2 billion through iTunes music sales alone. Social networks benefit from increased activity, advertisers benefit from an exuberant audience, and widget users can, well, share favorite "American Idol" moments, send virtual margaritas or trout slap each other.

In the past, we've mostly sided with Swisher on the time-wasting inanity of widgets on Facebook and other social sites. Swayed by Rabois, we take it all back. Swisher, as my boss reminds me, "has become a boring soccer mom. Her idea of 'fun' involves picking up plastic toys." We, however, are very much in favor of fun. Especially the kind that adds up to market capitalizations in the billions of dollars.

We're just not sure Slide or any other of the widgetmakers are there yet. Scrolling through Facebook's application directory, we mostly find the Web's version of road-trip distractions like the find-all-50-states-license-plate game or the one where you guess the name of the person I'm thinking. They pass the time, sure. But are they the next American Idol? No.

Or not yet. Rabois, and his boss, Slide founder Max Levchin, will work until they get there. For an idea how they might, we suggest they and you check out Draw My Thing from Iminlikewithyou, a sort of Pictionary for the Web. Just remember, Keith: You type the answers rather than call them out.

Hyped widgetmaker explains the widgetmaker hype

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:20:00 PDT

Union Square Ventures funded Mark Pincus's casual games maker Zynga with $10 million not long after Max Levchin-founded widgetmaker Slide raised $50 million. Competitor RockYou wants a round of funding that would value it at $400 million. We like to scoff at these purveyors of online sheep-throwing tools, but that's serious scratch, people. In this excerpt from a longer interview with Kara Swisher, Zynga's Mark Pincus explains what widgetmakers see in our future — and shows us exactly what kind of pitch VCs are going for these days.

L is for Levchin, who never goes slow

Owen Thomas — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:20:00 PDT

Max Levchin, the cofounder of PayPal and the CEO of Slide, measures nearly everything, down to the optimum price to pay for an engagement ring. If he needs a metric for self-importance, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, provides one. He occupies 78 out of 294 pages, more than anyone else. Here are the index pages for "F" through "M":

Previously:

A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big

F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"

Slide CEO Max Levchin soon to wed Nellie Minkova

Owen Thomas — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Hidden in Fortune editor Andy Serwer's stream-of-capitalism blog was this nugget: Slide CEO Max Levchin will soon wed longtime girlfriend Nellie Minkova. Minkova, pictured here with Levchin, works at Clarium Capital Management, the hedge fund of Peter Thiel, Levchin's cofounder at PayPal. For more of Minkova, see this excerpt from a New York Times video where she discussed domestic life with a boyfriend who works 18 hours a day:

Slide's Max Levchin: It's time to shift away from advertising

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Worried about an upcoming recession, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin told News.com that his company, Slide, is "trying to shift away from advertising partially" and go "direct to consumers" for its revenues. "It cuts out one more party from the equation," Levchin said. "During a recession time you don't have to worry so much about building an enormous scale, you just have to build up a loyal base of fans that pay you a little bit." Slide's revenues today are generated mostly from ads on mini-applications embedded on Facebook and MySpace pages. Levchin is not the first to have come up with this idea, but having just raised $50 million from large investors for an ad-supported business, Levchin's shift in thinking is either a wise caution — or a brilliantly devious headfake for rivals who have yet to raise a big round of venture capital.

Similar fears likely went into Tumblr founder David Karp's decision to offer a subscription "Pro" package later this year. At the end of the last downturn, photo-sharing site Flickr sought shelter in subscription revenues while the advertising well remained dry. But an executive media director at an interactive agency tells us Levchin might be overreacting. "I have had absolutely no cutbacks so far," the exec said. "In conversations with peers they say they have not had cutbacks either."

Is Slide worth half a billion? Only if Facebook buys them

Jordan Golson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:40:01 PDT

In January a pair of money managers, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, bought 9.1 percent of Slide for $50 million. Fortune asks, "Are these widgets worth half a billion?" The mag doesn't come up with anything more than "maybe," but I'm willing to go a little further. Slide worth $550 million? No, despite its huge traffic numbers. While it's true that advertisers are desperate to reach the 18-24 market, I hardly think SuperPoke is what they had in mind.

Slide won't be running an IPO any time soon. The only way founder Max Levchin and Fidelity and T. Rowe Price cash out is by being acquired, perhaps for a hefty chunk of Facebook stock. Mark Zuckerberg's company already has a huge amount of eyeballs, but picking up Slide would give them even more — and most importantly, massive reach across the other social networks that Slide's widgets run on.

Zuckerberg has already said he wants to expand Facebook across the Web, looking ahead to the inevitable day when growth on his site stagnates, the way it already has on rival MySpace. Beacon, his first attempt to extend Facebook, flopped last year amid charges that the privacy-invading feature ruined some users' Christmases.

An ad network for widgets could be Facebook's answer to Google AdSense. Google makes a ton of money from ads placed on Google.com, but reaches thousands more sites by offering them a cut of ads it sells and places. It also helps track users as they move around the Web.

Combining Facebook's existing ad ventures with Slide's huge audience of drunken-party-pic posters would give Zuck a hedge against fickle users abandoning his site for the next new thing. As Google showed us, the advertising business is where the money is made. It would be smart for Zuckerberg to solidify his hold on the market while he still can. Of course, he'd have to buy Slide for inflated stock, not cash — but Web entrepreneurs like Levchin love to deflect reporters' questions about their wealth by saying it's all on paper.

Max Levchin's guide to luring developers

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:40:20 PST

Max Levchin's widget maker Slide just took on funding that set its value at $550 million. And the company's user base grew 142 percent in a year to 150 million users, giving it the ninth largest "reach" on the Internet. Maybe this means its worth paying attention to Levchin's ideas on "How to successfully launch a social networking platform? Maybe. But not for more than 100 words.

Create a feeling of technological openness. Developers love the ins and outs — the bugs, unfinished features.
Treat developers equally, but the best ones? Let them closer in.
Manage a community pre-launch: meet-ups, chats, IRC channels, mailing lists, visit companies.
Shift support/documentation onto the early developers. Smaller developer groups will help each other.
Respond quickly to platform issues.
Bible-thump: "you will make money" during the early platform days.
Make your campus a place that developers want to visit, a prize.
Over-communicate policy changes with the perception of open debate.
Make the goal of your PR team coverage for successful developers
Hold frequent developer events. Invite leading developers to speak.

(Photo by flawedartist)

Is Slide prepping for an IPO?

Owen Thomas — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:00:10 PST

BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy has more details on Slide's new funding round: Max Levchin's Web widget factory is now valued at $550 million, after raising funds from the likes of Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price. While the company is mum on IPO prospects, such big institutional investors typically come in during a so-called "mezzanine" round — a company's final private financing before a public stock offering.

Lacy, citing an internal Slide presentation, says the company ranked ninth in reach on the Web, after Amazon.com, and now has 150 million users for its MySpace slide shows, Facebook apps, and other Web applets. That's an increase of 142 percent from a year ago, when Slide's valuation was reportedly a mere $80 million. A nice trick: Just double your user base, but see your valuation grow sevenfold.

Max Levchin's Slide set to take in new funding

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:33:13 PST

Serial entrepreneur and PayPal cofounder Max Levchin's widget maker Slide will take in a new round of funding, according to Boom Town. The deal, put together by New York-based Allen & Company, is said to propel Slide's value well past the $60 million to $80 million set just over a year ago.

The San Francisco startup, known for its social apps on Facebook and MySpace, last took funding in 2006 — about $20 million from BlueRun Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and the Mayfield Fund. Maybe now Levchin can get some sleep. (Photo by flawedartist)

Snort a little of this and you'll be wide awake

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:20:57 PST

UCLA prof Jerome Siegel discovered that the lack of a brain hormone called orexin A causes narcolepsy, Wired reports. So what'd he do? Have a bunch of sleep-deprived monkeys snort the stuff and see how they perform on tests, of course.

Turns out the poorly rested monkeys who took an orexin A blow performed as well on tests as well-rested monkeys, according to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience. You've discovered sleep-hating Max Levchin's miracle drug, Professor! (Photo by umjanedoan)

Is Peter Thiel Silicon Valley's godfather?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:12:38 PST

Here's the real takeaway from Fortune's long-expected profile of the PayPal mafia: "Peter Thiel has a butler." The former PayPal CEO is living large in Pacific Heights. But he's hardly idle. With PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, masterminding a wide array of startups founded by some of his star hires at the payments company he sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. He's now on the board of Facebook, with a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and stakes in Yelp, LinkedIn, Slide, and others besides. He may not quite be the capo di tutti capi imagined by Fortune's photo editors — who cleverly staged a Godfather-inspired shoot, above — but he's created a gang that can run free from the rules of the traditional VC game. Sand Hill Road hates him for it. I say, more power to him — and the rest of his mafiosi. (Photo of Thiel and Levchin by Robyn Twomey/Fortune; Godfather still from IMDB)

Max Levchin has more money, less sleep than you

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:30:11 PDT

Sunday's New York Times profile of PayPal and Slide founder Max Levchin tackles the phenomena of serial entrepreneurs. What makes them start multiple companies after a multimillion-dollar IPO or sale? The short answer: Money, but not in the way that you think. Levchin talks about how Slide's exit needs to be more than the $1.5 billion PayPal received, plus inflation, for him to be pleased with the outcome. (Look no further than fellow PayPal Mafia membes Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who sold YouTube for a PayPal-topping $1.65 billion, for another example of this behavior.) Netcape cofounder Marc Andreessen, who was interviewed for the article, points out the obvious in Silicon Valley: No one here really cares about money in the consumption sense, but everyone cares about having more than the other guy. San Francisco society blog SF Luxe begs entrepreneurs to become conspicuous in their consumption, and we'd like to agree. It's more fun for the rest of us.

The other secret? No one sleeps around here. Levchin offhandedly mentions his life without a company:

"I enjoy sitting on nice beaches and hanging out with my girlfriend and playing with my dog, but that's three hours a day," Mr. Levchin said. "What about the remaining 18 hours I'm awake?"

Unless Levchin has mastered the 30-hour day, we're counting a mere three hours reserved for sleep. Are we sure he's not a cyborg?

"Widgets aren't just about fun and games... ...

Megan McCarthy — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:37:19 PDT

"Widgets aren't just about fun and games... This is a big step toward maturity for us." —Max Levchin, CEO of widget maker Slide, which Time Magazine thinks will go public next year. [Time Magazine]

A devotee begins to lose faith

wagger1 — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:07:10 PDT

Slide executive Keith Rabois, one of the many new converts to Facebook in Silicon Valley, asks how much a Facebook app user is worth. The increasingly popular social network lets other Web companies plant applications, like Slide's photo-sharing service, on its site. But it's not clear how much loyalty users of such add-ons have to any site besides Facebook. So Rabois's question is apt, if a bit tardy: One wonders why Rabois didn't ponder such matters before Slide CEO Max Levchin got up on stage with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to swear fealty to Facebook's platform.

Elon Musk back on Sequoia

Chris Mohney — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:00:34 PST

After disappearing from the Sequoia homepage of fame, one-time Paypal CEO Elon Musk — see his take on his own backstory here — is back, with a new smiley portrait. Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, the mo' "real" founders of Paypal, are also still on the page of course. They're both wearing crowns as befits their royal status. A polite distance separates Thiel and Levchin from Musk in the gallery. One imagines a similar dynamic emerging at a cocktail party where all three are present.

PayPal Verified: A review of the companies founded by PayPal grads

Nick Douglas — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:11:54 PDT

Google's purchase of YouTube means one more success story for former PayPal employees, as co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim all worked at PayPal in its early days. The payment company, now a division of eBay, boasts many other successful startups founded by its alumni.

For example, PayPal VP Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn, the most popular business-networking site, and one of the few social networks with an actual point. Another former VP, Jeremy Stoppelman, cofounded review site Yelp with early PayPal employee Russ Simmons, funded by former PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Levchin was also one of many PayPallers (including his co-founder Peter Thiel) to executive-produce the film "Thank You for Smoking." Thiel also funded Facebook, which is possibly days away from making its own billion-dollar sale.

But not every PayPal grad project is popular. Levchin also sank his time into Slide, a photo-sharing site described by blogger Eran Globen as "a mashup of photos and the marquee tag," since its main service is providing slideshows of photos hosted elsewhere.

Wikipedia lists a plethora of other startups by PayPal grads: the conservative World Ahead Publishing, Room 9 Entertainment (which made "Thank You for Smoking"), spacecraft launch vehicle maker SpaceX, and Craigslist wannabe HourTown. Some are successful, some can barely build a web page, but they hint at a sort of entrepreneuring bug in PayPal's core team. And hey, if some crash and burn, who's going to mock someone who built one of the 90s dot-com boom's few worthy survivors?

Internet Millionaires to African AIDS Babies: Drop dead!

Nick Douglas — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 07:30:00 PDT

Marketer and pro-blogger advocate Curt Hopkins is a good and reasonable man. Good because he's running the Blogswana project, in which students will help those affected by AIDS in Africa tell the world about their plight. Reasonable because when he asked the following Valley people — people known as good souls with a passion for world-changing technology — for financial support, he expected a few yeses and a few nos.

But from all but Blogger co-founder Evan Williams, Curt didn't get so much as a "screw you." Not all of the non-responders are worth millions, but one suspects they're all better off than the average Central African farmer.

Decent People
Evan Williams (Blogger, Odeo)

People Who Would Rather Buy a Fourth Lexus Than Give a Dime to Keep African AIDS Babies From Going Tits Up
Chris Anderson (Wired)
Ted Leonsis (AOL)
~~Steve~~ Scott Johnson (Ookles, Feedster)
Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
Craig Mundie (Microsoft)
Esther Dyson (I have no idea)
Joi Ito (goes to lots of Blogger conferences, other than that...visits diaper hookers in Kabukicho?)
Michael Arrington (Techcrunch)
Steve Wozniak (Apple)
Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media)
Kevin Kelly (Wired)
Jason Calacanis (Weblogsinc/AOL)
Nick Denton (Gawker)
James Hong (Hot or Not)
Max Levchin (Slide, Paypal)

The Blogswana Project [Official site]
Donation page [Blogswana Project]

Is Max Levchin a cyborg?

ndouglas — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:01:04 PDT

Hot-or-Not's James Hong has said it, other friends have hinted at it — Max Levchin is a cyborg. The ex-Paypal exec and Slide founder may be an early-model Cylon or a Soong-type android, or even a Gigolo Joe mecha. But he sure ain't human.

Evidence that Max Levchin is a cyborg

The suspicion started when Marketwatch scared me (and this time not because of Jon Friedman's writing style). Bambi Francisco published her interview with Max Levchin — complete with WMV featuring the Slide founder. And one thing drove me crazy (other than my inability to screencap it): Max moved like a Disney animatronic model. [Bambi Francisco]
The man is ripped. What human engineer has biceps? [Flickr]
As noted in the above photo's Flickr page, Max follows a polyphasic sleep schedule — a perfect excuse to stay constantly awake, always heading somewhere else to "sleep."
When he worked at PayPal doing security (alert: common robot job), Max invented the Gausebeck-Levchin test, a Captcha test designed to tell humans apart from computers. Tell me this — how did Max know what computers think? [Wikipedia]

After the jump, I run Max through the Voight-Kampff test.

I confronted Max with my fears, using the reliable Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner.
Valleywag: Reaction time is a factor in this so please pay attention. Answer as quickly as you can.
It's your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Max Levchin: Is there some sort of a connotation with calfskin?
Knowing you, you are testing my homosexuality index. :-)(
I have gotten leather wallets for bdays before.
Wag: It's just a question. In answer to your query, it's written down for me. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response.
Max: Ah.
I say thanks.
Wag: You've got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
Max: Trying to remember the correct quote from Blade Runner...
In real life, I'd probably ask him to consider whether he'd like to be "collected" like the butterflies — on a pin.
Then again, I am a bit of a enviro.
Wag: Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
Max: It's hard to translate that from Russian.
My mom is associated with Russian words, not English.
Wag: Go ahead.
Max: Warmth, food, toys, multiplication table, after-school projects, camping, trains.

Conclusion: Without an actual Voight-Kampff machine, or even being in the same room with Max, the test proves inconclusive. But he knows Russian, and those replicants looked Ukranian, right? [Voight-Kampff machine]
In his defense, Max pointed to an unsolicited documentation of his spontaneous facial expressions. For example:

Um, sure Max. Did you think I'd forget a little thing called the emotion chip? You are so busted. [atgig.com]

Valleyfolk invade Hollywood

ndouglas — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:33:29 PST

The Hollywood Valley invasion is just a swap: the Valley's taking over Hollywood, one clever indie flick at a time.

The latest little victory: Hot or Not's James Hong joined his pal Max Levchin at the L.A. premiere of Thank You for Smoking. Max and a handful of other former Paypal execs joined producer David Sachs (the former Paypal COO now living in the Pulp Fiction Uma-coke-overdose house) as exec producers.

But that's not the sign of invasion — the real kicker is an attendee's report that "there were more Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (both successful and not) in the premiere audience than stars."

Levchin and company are among good company. Other Valley-to-Hollywood producers include:

Jeff Skoll, eBay co-founder. Exec-produced Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck. He also produced North Country.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founding Google boys. Exec-produced the upcoming Broken Arrows — together, of course.
George Zachary, folks tell me, dabbled in the film biz, but even IMDb doesn't know any titles he's attached to.

And, of course, a host of others, which you'll gleefully ID in the comments.

Is Silicon Valley taking over Hollywood? [James Hong]

Valleywag hotties: SOMA startup edition

ndouglas — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:18:37 PST

Two adorable San Fran dot-commers duke it out. Will Slide's Max Levchin pound Six Apart's Ben Trott into submission? Or will Ben win with that grin?

Valleywag hotties: Skins beat shirts

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:34:12 PST

Votes are in! We're wrapping up the first four hotties contests and moving on to more Valley men. A reminder: After the ladies (and the gents of a certain persuasion) have their fun, we'll start "Hotties: Ladies of the Valley."

So the results:

Ben Trott (55.4%) vs. Kevin Rose (44.6%)
Max Levchin (53.3%) vs. James Hong (46.7%)
Jeff Weiner (59.1%) vs. Jerry Yang (40.9%)
Sergey Brin (73.2%) vs. Larry Page (26.8%)

The winners will face off after another bout of round-one competitors. To the losers: sorry, guys, the Valley's a tough place. You all win Mr. Congeniality.

Earlier: Ben vs. Kevin
Max vs. James
Jeff vs. Jerry
Sergey vs. Larry

After the jump, the results in full graphical glory.

Valleywag hotties: Hot-or-not that there's anything wrong with that

ndouglas — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:33:45 PST

Ladies: Lemme talk to the gentlemen for a minute. Some of them are dealing with tough feelin's right now.

Guys, voting for a Valleywag hottie does not make you gay. "Hotties: Ladies edition" is coming up any day now.

In the meantime, clench those teeth and pick the next hottie — Max Levchin, former PayPal bouncer and current Slide-rider, or James Hong, Hot or Not founder and nearly-naked posterboy. Bonus: they're buds, so either way, this is almost a twofer.